Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Are Alien Abductions a kind of Spiritual Reverie?

Allogenes is a Sethian Gnostic text from the New Testament apocrypha. The main surviving copies come from the Nag Hammadi library…A small fragment also survives in the more recently discovered Codex Tchacos…[Wikipedia]

The passages presented here are two of many, in the Allogenes text, which mimic some alien abduction scenarios, if not in exact wording, at least in an imagined or real emotional sense:

My soul went slack and I fled and I was very disturbed. And [I] turned to myself and saw the light that [surrounded] me and the Good that was in me, and I became Divine. And the all-glorious one, Youel, contacted me again and empowered me…

When I was seized by the eternal light, by the garment that was upon me, and was taken up to a pure place whose likeness cannot be revealed in the world…Allogenes (XI, 3)

While the abduction phenomenon is controversial, I do know people, credible persons, who have experienced what they consider an abduction but, maybe, what they really experienced was a transcendental event, not unlike that enumerated in Richard Bucke’s work, Cosmic Consciousness.

Yes, there are multiple accounts which are hardly transcendental, horrifying actually.

But those accounts may be tempered by the physical and psychological vicissitudes that accompany transcendent events, which would be traumatic for some individuals, those with shaky morals, much like those who have Near-Death experiences that take them to Hell rather than a more pleasant place, which most NDExperiencers relate.

Abductions, per se, have little to do with the UFO phenomenon, to my way of thinking, but it has become a peripheral element in many ufological circles, and will always remain connected to UFOs and the discussion of UFOs.

That aside, it might be time for those who have experienced an “abduction” to weigh the possibility that they’ve had a spiritual crisis or moment of enlightenment, which have occurred to saints and sinners alike; e.g. Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul). Thomas Aquinas, and Malcolm X.